Silver Bells
by TStabler
Summary: It's that time of year where we sit back and re-evaluate our choices, the relationships that have blessed and tainted our lives, and look to a new year as a new beginning, with new hope. But maybe we need just a bit of help to see it all clearly. What happens when that help comes from an unknown source? Olivia Benson and Elliot Stabler are about to find out. EO HOLIDAY FIC
1. Chapter 1

****A/N: It's that time of year where we sit back and re-evaluate our choices, the relationships that have blessed and tainted our lives, and look to a new year as a new beginning, with new hope. But maybe we need just a bit of help to see it all clearly.****

 ** **DISCLAIMER: I do not own these characters or basic plot points, I do, however, own the words and storyline of this particular story, so don't sue me, Dick Wolf.****

The day after Thanksgiving was never much of a cause for celebration. Not for her. Of course, there was the obligatory excursions with her partner's kids, stores and shoppes and cafes at two-in-the-morning with hot credit and cold coffee. She always felt a bit embittered by their overflowing carts and spill-brimmed bags, while there was never more than five packages in her hands. Six if she was feeling extra generous, if her partner hadn't found a way to end up in the dog house and earned himself two gifts.

This year, though, it was different. It was filled with a tension so thick it almost choked her. An empty chair at the dinner table had somehow tied itself to the ankles of every one else, the weight of hit dragging behind them as it tried to hold them back. She did what she could to lighten moods, even suggesting bad karaoke and ridiculous middle-school appropriate charades before their venture into the Black Friday chaos began, but the mood was still somber, the gloom still stifling.

"You think she went to see Grandma and Grandpa?" the youngest girl, eleven going on thirty, asked with hopful bespectacled eyes.

She opened her mouth to reply, but the child's oldest sister took her opportunity away. "She would've told us," the fifteen year old said, "We all would've gone with her."

The middle child, after a hearty sniff of a cinnamon-scented candle, and an even heartier sneeze, shook her head. "I wasn't supposed to hear, but I heard," she confessed in a sniffled whisper. "She left her wedding ring and a note on the kitchen table." She looked at her sisters, and then at her dad's partner. "She's gone."

Blinking away the memory of that moment in the middle of the night, two weeks ago, she took a sip of her spiced gingerbread latte and licked her lips. Her breath fogged the air in front of her, white clouds swirling before her eyes as she walked. It was another reason to add to the list, the explanations she had for hating the Yuletide season. At least, now, she didn't have to suffer alone, the rest of what she considered her family was miserable, too, making them, somehow, happier.

Her partner, Elliot, and his four children, had woken up the day before Thanksgiving to find that Kathy, wife and mother, had taken off in the middle of the night. Elliot had tried his best to keep it from the kids, hoping they'd think she'd just gone out to buy last minute trimmings for the turkey, got stuck in traffic, but he'd told his partner the truth. Kathy'd left. He'd blamed himself. Nothing could change his mind about that, but for some reason, in the days following, he'd been calmer, almost serene. Everyone in his house seemed to have relaxed, and what should have been a time of confusion and grief, was anything but.

She pulled the pile of dry-cleaning draped over her hand up a bit higher, having heard the plastic drag along the granite, and took another sip of her seasonal brew. She turned the corner, absently humming along to the filtered instrumental music blaring from the speakers hung on the city's telephone poles. The mayor's ghastly attempt at bringing New York together for the holidays seemed to be working.

She ran up the stone steps and pushed the carved-wood double-doors open with her elbows. She smiled brightly when her eyes landed on the person she was here to see. "Here, sweetie," she said, holding the brass hangers out to a boy of about eleven.

"Liv!" the young man cried, taking the pressed school uniform gratefully as he threw an arm around her. "You're a lifesaver!"

She laughed. "That's actually my job, yes," she said jokingly, as she tapped the badge at her hip. She tugged on the boy's navy blue blazer, chuckling, "Drop this one off at the cleaner's on the way home, huh? And I promise, I won't tell Daddy you spilled your juice all over it, again."

"Ah, bless you, Liv!" he said, clasping his hands together in grateful prayer.

"Be more careful, Dickie," she said with a soft smile. "You only have three of these. Maybe I'll guy you a new one for Christmas." She winked at him and laughed when he ran down the hall to change before his next class. She sighed and took a moment to look around the place. The foyer looked more like the entrance to a voctorian mansion than a school, and the walls and floor were pristine, glimmering in the light that bounced off the marble.

Turning her head, she grabbed a brochure out of the plastic display case on the wall. "Damn," she almost choked, scanning the tuition rates, which seemed to increase by grade. She briefly wondered how her partner, Elliot, could afford private school for all four of his kids, on cop's salary, but then she sobered. As she put the pamphlet back into place, she sighed. Kathy's income had probably helped.

She walked back out into the city winter, no longer humming along with 'Jingle Bell Rock," and tried to calculate how strapped he would be by doing it all on his own. "Shit," she seethed, wincing when she assumed that, if Kathy stayed gone, Dickie wouldn't be needing another uniform after all.

Halfway down the block, she found herself humming again, "Silver Bells." Making her way up another set of stone steps, she seemed to forget all about Elliot's potential financial troubles and palmed open the doors to the Sixteenth Precinct. She waved and smiled brightly to the cops and admin staff milling about the lobby. She held up her badge as she nodded to Bill, the security guard, and bypassed the metal detector. She slapped the elevator call button and had just stepped into its opening doors, when an unwelcome companion pushed his way into the box with her.

"Good morning, Detective Benson," the man said, his smarmy smile making his handsome features seem grotesque.

"Not anymore," she scoffed, turning her head away from him and downing another sip of her coffee.

"Aw, not nice," he said with an air of flirtation that seemed to be laced with condescension. "You know, the department Christmas party is coming up."

"Yeah," she said, staring at the glowing orange number, wishing it would magically skip to her floor. "Always happens, ya know, at Christmas."

The man narrowed his eyes. "Something different about you," he said. "You're being...nicer...to me."

She rolled her eyes. "You think this is me being nice?"

"Not in the least," he said. "But nicer. You haven't told me to go fuck myself, yet. Are you warming up to the idea of going out with..."

"Langan?" she interrupted.

He answered brightly. "Yes?"

She timed it perfectly. As soon as the doors slid open, she smiled at him. "Go fuck yourself." She stepped out of the elevator first, sidestepping her way through the hall. She knew he was behind her, and she knew why. She only hoped it was for Munch and Fin's case, not her and Elliot's. She could only stand so much of Trevor Langan.

She veered left and walked into the sqaudroom of the Special Victim's Unit, found her partner standing by a desk in the corner, and strode over to him, handing him the rest of her coffee.

He drank it, without hesitation, and glared at the man in the suit behind Olivia. "What's he doing here?"

As she took off and hung up her wool coat, she said, "Asking me to go to the Christmas party with him."

He choked on a mouthful of coffee. "Sorry," he coughed. "What? What did, um, what did you say?"

"Nothing," she said, folding her arms over her red sweater. "I shot him down before he actually asked," she smiled.

Seemingly relieved, he turned toward Langan. "Okay,so she told you to fuck off, go away."

"Ah, no can do, Stabler," Langan said, tapping the side of his briefcase, and plastering another smug grin on his face. "Here on business. Which way to my client?"

Munch, an older, wiser, more embittered detective, peered at him over a pair of wire-rimmed glasses. "Who's your client?"

Langan looked at Munch, confused. "You all just stand around and do nothing, all day, don't you?"

Olivia rolled her eyes, the second time already that day, and said, "No, but this is SVU, do you know how many scumbags are sitting back there in a box, or across the hall in holding? You can't just say, 'my client,' like we only have a one a day, asshole."

Langan squinted at her and tilted his head. "That's a 'no' on dinner tonght, then?"

"Fuck, Langan!" Elliot snapped. "Who the hell are you here for?"

Langan chuckled, his mission accomplished, and he said, "Darryl Forthman."

"Shit," Munch said softly. "Ours," he griped. "He's in holding, just tell them..."

"I know," Langan said, "Not my first time at the rodeo, old man." He turned, winked at Olivia, and headed across the hall to find his client.

"I guess this means I need to call Novak," Munch said, looking at his partner, Fin, who hadn't seemed to have noticed anything that happened. "Fin? Man, you all right?"

Fin nodded. "You okay?" He was looking at Olivia.

Olivia, confused, took the coffee out of Elliot' hands, drank the last sip, and tossed it into a trash can by her desk. "I'm fine, why?"

Fin shrugged and frowned slightly. "You look different, that's all." He got up and slapped Munch on the shoulder. "Let's ge Novak down here, build our offense." He smiled back at Olivia and Elliot before walking to the back of the room with Munch.

"Wierd," Olivia mumbled.

"Huh?" Elliot questioned, "What's weird?"

Olivia looked at him. "Langan said the same thing," she said, biting her lip. "Said there was something different about me."

"We're all a little different, this time of year," he said, and then he looked at her. "You do look...I don't know. Lighter."

She shrugged. "I've been eating too many of your sugar cookies to be any lighter, Stabler," she joked.

He laughed. 'I mean, like a...like a weight has been lifted, I guess. You look..." He stopped, really took a long look at her, and said, "You look beautiful, actually."

Feeling her cheeks warm, she turned and looked down, at a spot on the floor in front of her feet. "Thanks." She cleared her throat. "You hear from..."

"No," he said before she could finish asking. "No, uh, and I don't think I'm going to." He stepped around her and picked up a thick envelope off of his desk. "These were here when I walked in, this morning."

She took the envelope as he offered it, opened it slowly, and pulled out a stapled packet of papers. At first glance, it was just a bunch of legal jargon she didn't care to understand, but then, she saw three words she recognized. "Dissolution of marriage," she whispered. She looked up at him. "Divorce, oh, God, El, I...I'm..."

"No, don't be," he said. "Look at the filing date at the top. Those are the ones..."

"Oh, she...she kept them? The whole time?" She folded them back up and shoved them back into the envelope, unsure of which emotion felt more genuine, the guilt or the excitement. "What are you..."

"Already made a copy," he interrupted her. "I'm heading down to hand them over to Shiela Atkins, during my lunch. She, uh, she says I got a good shot at coming out of this relatively unscathed." He tried to smile. "The only things taking a hit are my bank account and my eternal soul."

"El, divorce isn't really going to send you to..."

He held up a hand. "I was kidding. Kind of." He took a deep breath and plopped into his chair. "I'm claiming sousal abandonment, this way she can't just walk in and take away everything we just settled into having."

She smirked. "We?"

"Um, uh, yes. Me. The kids. Um, you're my partner. That's we. We're a 'we,' is that a problem?" He suddenly looked sharply at her, defensive.

She knew why. "No, we, uh, we can be a we. I am helping you out, with all of this, so..." she stopped. It wasn't the kind of 'we' she wanted, deep down, but she'd take it. Then, the guilt she'd been fighting finally won. "Maybe...wait a while. I called a few of her friends, a few from the hospital, couple from the PTA. No one's heard from her." She took a step toward him. "I have a BOLO out on the wagon, if she comes back you..."

Her phone chirped, interrupting her, and she pulled it out of her pocket. Her head cocked as she looked down at it, confused. She didn't recognize the number, they weren't in her contacts, and the text message was short, clear, pointed.

 _Stop looking. Take the favor._

She stiffened as she straightened up. She looked around, her eyes darting from face to face, and she dropped into her chair and pulled up the search her computer had been running for two days straight. "What the..." she questioned, the program's error message popping up.

"What's the matter? Someone send you a dick pic?" he laughed, but when she didn't, he got worried. "Liv?"

She was ignoring him as she typed the phone number into another search, cursing and smacking the keyboard when it came up as a disposable, pay-by-the-minute, phone. No name, no trail. The phone bleeped again, this time more brusque.

 _I said stop looking. Or else._

"Liv, come on, you're scaring me, here," he said, leaning across his desk. "Who's texting you?"

She shook her head trying to make sense of it all. "Um, Kathy...I...I think." She breathed out heavily and looked up at him. "Burner phone, she said...um...don't try to look for her." She bit her lip, not knowing if she'd just lied to him or not.

He sighed, his heart cracked just a bit, but he slapped his hands onto his desk. "Well, that...settles things, doesn't it." He swallowed hard, blinked and shook tension out of his neck. "So, uh, who are you going to this gala with? I know it's not Langan."

She furrowed her brow, wondering why he wasn't more concerned, more pissed off. "What? No one, why are you even..."

"Because we should go. You and me, I mean, um, we." He waited in silence, watching her face turn from sheer confusion to something nearly unreadable. "Well?"

"Yeah," she said, nodding once. "We...we should go." She gave him a small smile, and just as the captain's door opened to send them spinning into work-mode, her phone beeped once again.

 _You're welcome._

 _Who is this?_ She texted back, confusion swirling within her. An automatic reply told her the number was no longer in service. She stared at her phone a moment longer, but something pulled her out of her daze. Someone humming, soft and low, to the tune of "Silver Bells." She turned to look over her shoulder, but no one was there.

"You ready?" Elliot asked, assuming she had heard Captain Cragen give their assignment.

"Oh, uh, Yeah," she said, standing and shoving her phone in her pocket. She rolled her eyes, again, this time at herself. It probably was Kathy, taking the coward's way out of an unhappy marriage and unhappy life. Kathy'd always suspected there was something between Olivia and Elliot, and Kathy must've assumed it would kick off as soon as she was gone, and this was her way of getting in one final dig. "Not everything is a conspiracy," she thought to herself, the same advice she often gave to Munch when he found political cover-ups in he grounds of his morning coffee.

She felt his hand hit her lower back as they walked toward the door, sending shivers up her spine. She turned to say something, but before she could, he winked at her. She smiled, and walked with him out of the squadroom, noticing a new kick in his step, as if he, too, were lighter in the way he'd said she was.

They chatted and laughed, teased each other and smacked each other, until finally they got into a deep red sedan, oblivious to the black car starting its engine, preparing to follow them.

 ** **A/N: Erm...happy holidays?****


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: When you work for the NYPD and have some serious federal connections, no one is ever truly "gone."**

 **DISCLAIMER: I do not own these characters or basic plot points, I do, however, own the words and storyline of this particular story, so don't sue me, Dick Wolf.**

"Did you hear me?"

Olivia looked up, her blank expression suddenly softening into slight remorse, a grim smile crossing her face. "No, sorry."

"I asked if you were feeling okay," Elliot repeated as he dug a huge potion of rice out of a Tupperware container and into a green bowl. "You usually eat three bowls of my chili, you barely made a dent in your first, something's up."

She shook her head and forced a spoonful of her dinner into her mouth. She gave an involuntary appreciative moan as she chewed and came out of her haze slightly and looked across the table at him. "You're taking all of this rather well," she said, poking at a tomato with her fork. "A little too well."

"Honestly," he said on a sigh, "I don't feel like this is a bad thing. I feel like…" he exhaled. "Look, I know I've been kind of distant…"

"Ha," she scoffed. "That's putting it mildly."

He chuckled as he shoveled a large spoonful of chili into his mouth. When he swallowed, he looked at her with something unfamiliar in his eyes. "I knew this was coming," he admitted. "We got into this...huge fight. A few weeks ago. Over toilet paper."

"Seriously," Olivia intoned dryly.

He nodded and slowly brought another spoonful of food to his lips. "Two-ply isn't thick enough, double-soft is too thick, the good stuff is too expensive, the stuff we can afford feels like sandpaper…" he babbled. He dropped his spoon into his bowl and shoved the green ceramic away from him. "It was our fourth stupid fight over stupid fucking shit, and when I found myself yelling, across the goddamned room, 'I don't care, you only use it to wipe your ass,' knew." He sighed again. "We weren't really fighting about the toilet paper."

"El, maybe I can…"

He held up a hand; he wasn't finished. "She brought it up first, asked if I knew where she put the papers. I told her exactly where they were, without even thinking," he laughed bitterly. "Sad, huh? She asked, ya know, who should go. I said I didn't want to talk about it. It was her choice. If she wanted me to leave, I would. If she wanted to leave, I wouldn't stop her." He blinked away a few tears he wasn't even aware had formed. "We fought for hours, every night since. Nothing of any substance, except for…"

She could tell by the way his voice broke off, so abruptly, what the unspoken word was. "Me," she whispered, her eyes fallen and now staring into her chili.

"Wednesday, that was when she crossed the line." His nostrils flared, his eyes narrowed, his chest began to heave. "No one, Liv, not even her, nobody talks about you like that without me running defense. Shit she was saying, whether it was true or not, was so fucking…"

"Elliot!" she snapped. "You let your wife walk out because she called me names? Are you out of your fucking…"

"She accused us of having an affair! Again!" he yelled. "Then she called you a few names that had me questioning if she was really Catholic!" He shook his head. "I was as respectful as I could've been, but I couldn't lie to her. Not when she asked me...point blank...if I had any…" He stopped again, this time to save himself embarrassment and rejection. He sighed once again. "That night, I grabbed a pillow and a blanket and made my way to the couch for the, what, four-hundred-and-seventy-fifth night in a row? She asked why I was just giving up, and I said...I told her she knew why. Then I said, I looked her dead in the eyes, and I said, 'If you want to go, just go.' I fell asleep, woke up an hour or so later, I went upstairs to apologize and...she was gone. Just the note, and her rings."

There was a long pause, silence only broken by the metallic clink of silver against ceramic, and then finally her soft words. "I still have those text messages. I could talk to Morales, we could find her. If you...if that's what you..."

"Liv, don't," he almost pleaded, his eyes closing as his head fell back. "Just...it's better this way, that's what I'm trying to tell you." He lifted his head and looked at her. "The tension in this house...it's gone. I've spent the last two weeks sleeping in an actual bed, with no fear of being awakened in the middle of the night by a screaming woman who thinks everything I do is wrong."

She noticed the way his eyes flickered slightly as he spoke, and she allowed herself to breathe.

He continued with a small smile. "My children...Liv, I haven't heard them laugh the way they've been in so fucking long. I haven't had to send them to their rooms so I could fight with their mother, like we didn't know they could hear us through the walls. I let her go...because…" he took a breath and licked his lips, trying to recall how he'd put it when he'd said it to Kathy. "I never wanted our marriage...the past fifteen years, our four...beautiful children...to be something we regret. That's where we were heading, we both knew it. If we stayed together, we would've resented each other, and...along the way, we would lose the chance to truly be happy...and we would rob the kids of that chance, too." He looked at her, then, a severity in his eyes that had only ever existed when he spoke about his children or his faith. "We would hurt other people, too. People who...who are the last people in the world we would ever want to hurt."

Clearing her throat, she looked away, and she grabbed her bowl with two hands. "Are you, uh, are you finished? We should...we need to…"

"Liv?" he intruded, gravity in his tone and benediction in his eyes. He tried like hell to communicate without words, to make her hear him without speech. It was one of the things they were always so good at, that sometimes they failed for fear of seeing the wrong thing. Or the right thing at the wrong time.

She returned his heavy gaze, remaining fixed on his stare as she took his green bowl, half filled with chili and half filled with hope. She refused to believe what was hidden in his eyes, what she was so plainly seeing. "What?"

"Am I keeping you from something? From...someone?" He asked the question, his heart drumming louder the more time passed between his last word and her response.

She shook her head and gave a crooked smiled. "No, of course not. You're my priority, El, you and the...the kids. Why are you looking at me like that?"

He had a stupid grin on his face, the kind a child gives when presented with ice cream before dinner, even after getting an F on a math test. Like he'd won the lottery without ever buying a ticket. "Promise me," he said softly as he rose to his feet, "That you won't go looking for Kathy, that you won't try to fix my broken marriage, again."

She flushed, her bottom lip curling in between her teeth. "You know about that, huh?"

He nodded, moving slightly closer to her. "I know about both times, and I swear, I know you thought you were somehow saving me, but all you really did was prolong the inevitable. Just...trust me, okay? Trust that I am making the best possible choices for myself, for my kids, and...maybe...eventually for…"

Her ringing phone impeded the conclusion of his sentence, and he rolled his eyes as he took the bowls out of her hands and dropped them inelegantly into the sink.

"Benson," she answered, stifling her laughter at his childlike petulance. "Yeah, we're here. We'll be down in a minute. Where? Wait, from who?" she squinted as she listened. "Okay, we're on the way." She hung up and bit her lip as she looked over toward Elliot. "Duty calls," she said, shaking her cell phone in her hand.

"Of course it does," he said, a flat grin on his face. "Anyway, you promise?"

She laughed as she nodded, and she exhaled slowly as she pulled her coat up off of the metal chair, kicking it back under the cafeteria table. She looked around the tiny kitchenette, nestled in the corner of the SVU break room. The place held a lot of memories, laden with guilt and a fiery excitement she could never fully justify. She let out a hard breath and looked toward Elliot. "You know where she is, don't you?"

"Two weeks till Christmas, the mother of my kids?" he queried with an innocent look. "Yeah, I think I do." He put on his long, wool coat, and then draped an arm around Olivia's shoulders,m leading her out of the door and down the steps toward the squadroom. "Hey, do you have any idea what bit Cragen?"

"What do you mean?" she asked, taking the last step with a bit of a kick, leading Elliot toward the doors to the hall.

"He's been really...I don't know, chipper? That the right word?" he laughed, heading down the hall with his partner. Ever since Thanksgiving, he seems to be a lot happier, you notice?"

Olivia hummed as she hit the call button for the elevator. "I guess he's been less of a pain-in-the-ass than usual."

He guided her through the opening doors. "Maybe he's seeing someone," he said. As the doors slid shut he said, "I'm happy he's happy, it's making our job a lot easier, but...I really wish he'd stop singing 'Silver Bells."

 **A/N: OH? Let's hope that's just a coincidence, huh?**


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: Silver bells, silver bells, it's Christmastime in the city! And for two detectives, it's really starting to feel like it.**

 **DISCLAIMER: I do not own these characters or basic plot points, I do, however, own the words and storyline of this particular story, so don't sue me, Dick Wolf.**

It took her three hours. She felt just a pang of guilt, as though she were overstepping bounds somehow, but the overwhelming relief overpowered anything else. She tossed the small notebook and pen down onto the oak and glass coffee table, watching with baited breath as her coffee mug wobbled slightly from the reverb. Sighing, she grabbed the mug and brought it to her winter-chapped lips. After a soothing sip, she leaned back against the cool, brown leather cushions, closed her eyes, and smiled.

"Oh, I like that look," a voice spoke from somewhere at her left.

She opened one eye questioningly. "Huh?" she scoffed.

He grinned at her. "What is responsible for that smile?" he asked, pointing to her still smirking mouth. And then he stiffened. "Or who?"

She pressed her lips together as she sat up straight, reminding herself to buy lip balm as soon as possible, and she took another sip of her coffee. "I, uh, just…solved a problem, that's all."

"Right," he intoned, sitting next to her, the weight of him causing the couch to dip, causing her to slide a little closer to him. The blessed curse of leather. "What problem?"

She gnawed for a moment at the inside of her cheek. "Promise you won't hate me," she demanded gently.

"I could never," he said, a playful lilt to his voice that counter-balanced his seriousness. He truly could never hate her. He'd tried, once. It backfired, tremendously.

She reached out to grab the notebook, her thick, blue, wool sweater grazing and catching on the rough wooden edge of the table. "If we cut back on a few things, and cook more often than ordering out, then we could…um…well, nothing much has to…"

He took the pad of paper from her as her trembling fingers offered it up. He looked down, confused, the question mark clearly scrawled on his face, but after a moment, realization took its place. "Liv, you…you don't have to…I mean, you figured out everything…down to the cable bill. I thought you…I mean, I assumed you'd eventually…"

"It was just a thought," she interrupted quickly, not about to listen to him tell her she wasted three hours and exhausted all of her mathematic ability for nothing, because he didn't want her, or need her. "Um, I just thought, if you needed…"

He stopped her, surprising her by throwing his arms around her and squeezing her tightly. "Thank you," he whispered to her. "I just…I didn't know if you were serious this morning, when you said you'd stay." He pulled away from her. "I thought you mean, like, for a few days," he chuckled, but then he lifted the pad, tilted his head, and said, "This…this is…more than a few days, huh?"

"If you…if you want me here, El, I'm here," she said, finding courage in her voice again, letting girlish embarrassment fade. "I just don't want you to think I was making assumptions. I just…I know what you make in a year, and Dickie's tuition alone is almost half that, so face it, you need me, Stabler."

"I will never deny that," he said, a meaningful smile on his face as his hand unconsciously moved to the side of her face and toyed with a strand of her hair. "You can even ask me under oath." He realized, and abruptly moved his hand, and pushed himself back slightly. "We don't have to cut back that much," he told her, snapping into a more platonic demeanor. He reached out and grabbed the pen, crossed out a few things on Olivia's list, and said, "We have a lot in the bank, there's a trust fund for each kid, set up by my grandparents, so we wouldn't be…totally broke if…why are you looking at me like that?"

She didn't do much to change her facial expression at all, she simply shook her head, taken aback by his words. "You said 'we,' there. A couple of times."

"Told you this morning," he shrugged. "We're a 'we,' ya know? We have been for years, only now, I guess…or maybe soon it'll…it means more." He shook the pad a bit as he said, "Thank you for this. For, uh, everything, really. You didn't have to help out the way you did, the way you are, but thank God, you are. You're the one keeping everyone around here calm, and my kids…are, like, seventy-five percent female, so I would have been a complete fucking lunatic without you, the last two weeks." He cleared his throat. "I need to ask, why?"

Silence.

Complete silence.

Not a single sound was heard from anywhere in the house, the only noise at all filtering in from the city beyond the walls, the murmurings of the neighbors trying to hang their Christmas lights, a car horn from somewhere down the street, a fire alarm beeping incessantly at somebody's charcoal cookies.

Not a sound, until she inhaled, dryly, with purpose. She fought back the urge to cringe, to cry, to croak, and she looked right into Elliot's eyes. "If you have to ask me that, you're not a very good detective."

His lips twitched as they toyed with the idea of smiling. "I know the answer, but I need to hear you say it, to tell me that everything I have lost, sacrificed, and let go is gone for a reason. Because I think you know, if you asked me the same question, why I asked you to stay, why I didn't put up a fight about sharing a room, or whose sweatshirts are really in the drawer, or when I caught you half-asleep using my toothbrush…if you asked me why, I would give you the same answer."

In that moment, the universe shifted. Everything she'd come to know had been debunked, refuted, and newly discovered, life-altering facts took their place at the forefront of her mind. Her hands shivered with nerves and cold, the frost from outside filling the room as every cell in her own body produced epic heat. "Why," her voice spoke without permission from her brain.

He licked his lips, and sensing her chill, pulled her closer again, looping an arm around her and running his hot hand up and down the length of her arm. "And here I am, thinking you're the best detective in the field."

She chuckled. "But like you said, ya know, it'd be nice to hear it." She sighed and looked around the living room, at the mint green stucco walls with white panel trim, at the arched windows with their venetian blinds and swooped curtains, the light fixtures that gave the room a golden ambient glow, the maple and silver frames on the walls holding up frozen memories of a simpler, happier life once lived within the walls. "But neither of us is really ready to say it, huh?"

"I've never needed to say it," he whispered to her, "have I?" He moved closer, letting his lips graze her cheek.

His hot breath hit the conch of her ear, causing goosebumps to rise on every inch of her crème brulee skin. "No," she whispered back. "But before, if we're being honest, neither of us really knew how we would…"

"Yeah," he interrupted, nodding, his lips still gently brushing against her face. "I think we need…"

And as though fate were playing a vindictive and sadistic game, both of their cell phones chirped, loudly and violently. As the sound hit her ears, she jumped, flying away from him and pulling her phone out of her pocket. "Benson," came out of her mouth on a shaky breath.

"Yeah, I gotta swing by to pick up Liv, gimme ten minutes," Elliot said, responding to his caller. He hung up with a huff and looked over at her. "Munch said we have to…you okay?"

She nodded absently, the phone to her ear, puzzlement in her eyes. Wordlessly, she handed him her phone. She watched his face contort into the same confusion as hers, and then folded her arms.

He said, "Hello? Who the hell is this?" For an answer, he got a dial tone. He hung up the phone and shook his head, and as he handed the device back to her, he said, "I think maybe we do need to give your phone to Morales."

She bit her lip as she nodded and rose off of the leather couch, instantly missing the heat of his closeness. "What did Munch say?"

"DB on Eight-Fifth, Fort Hamilton Field," he said. "Local unit is overwhelmed, it looks like a sexual assault, so they called in a favor." He got to his feet, then, and as walked over to the coat rack by the door, his brows knitted together. "Coulda been a telemarketing call. One of those automated ones."

She hummed as he held open her coat. She slipped her arms into the sleeves and nodded her thanks, saying, "But there would've been some kind of message, right? This was just music. Just…'Silver Bells."

"That song seems to be haunting you, lately," he teased, winking. He ran to the stairs, wrapped on hand around the banister, and yelled up to whomever was still awake on the next floor. "Liv and I gotta go! Don't open the door, or answer the phone unless you know it's one of us! We love you!" his voice boomed. He closed his eyes and laughed at himself, once again he had referred to Olivia and himself as 'we' but something about it just felt right, freeing, and natural. He walked over to Olivia and said, "Gonna be a late night," as he opened the door. He made sure it was locked before he closed it behind them.

"Isn't it always?" she laughed. But as she turned to walk down the few steps to the driveway, she stopped short. "It's snowing," she said, a mild glee in her voice.

He looked up, letting a few flakes fall onto his face. They landed, tangled in his eyelashes, and he let out a short chuckle. "So it is," he said. He pulled his keys out of his coat pocket and clicked the button to unlock his car. He looked at her, smiling.

"It's beautiful," she said, taking in the snowy suburban view, the way lights glowed from beneath a white, flaky layer, and the way each tree and bush seemed to look so majestic wearing white.

Still looking at her, he said, "Yeah, absolutely beautiful." He looked out at the fluff-covered street. "Snow isn't half bad either." He laughed when he felt her slap his chest, but the hit seemed to cause a heavy weight to left off of his shoulders. "This is gonna be the best Christmas of my life, Liv. I can feel it."

She smiled, and as she stepped down onto the black pavement of Elliot's driveway and pressed her hand to the frigid handle of his black SUV, she caught a glimpse of the neighbor's lights twinkling under the piling snow, and she could swear she heard a choir singing "Silver Bells." She took a deep breath and realized that, for the first time in her life, she was looking forward to Christmas.

When she got into the car, settling into the heated passenger seat, she buckled her seatbelt and her thoughts drifted to the eerie phone call, the echo of "Silver Bells" with no human or mechanical voice explaining why. She assumed it must've been Kathy, adding to the list of anonymous texts telling her to stop looking, to stop trying to mend a relationship that no longer merited mending. Part of her figured that it was a way to somehow get revenge for years of unintentionally falling in love with her partner, for being wholly unaware that he was falling right back, for contributing to the "dissolution" of a marriage that had never truly solidified in the first place.

But now, as the car pulled out onto the road and made its way to Manhattan for the fourth time in three days, she wondered if anyone could truly be that intent on annoying her for something accidental. She pulled her phone out of her pocket, tapping it a few times until she found her call log. The number looked familiar, some locked part of her memory held this number in its grasp for a reason. "Hey," she called over to the driver.

Elliot, still grinning slyly, hummed responsively.

"Where did you say Kathy was?" she asked, tilting her head.

As he stretched his arm out to turn on the radio, he said, "I didn't, but I do know. If I need her, if something happens, I know how to reach her. She, uh, she doesn't want this life, anymore. She doesn't want…what used to be…our life. So, I'm giving her that." He eyed her for the few moments the car had stopped at a red light. "I asked you not to talk to…"

"I'm not," she said before he finished. "I just…this number, the one that keeps calling…and texting. I know this number, El. I just…don't remember how."

"Morales," he said, turning onto the road that would take them out of Queens, back into their dark reality. "He'll figure it all out, and then, uh, we'll have your number changed." He nodded with a smile, but the grin faded as he steered the car through a toll. He knew he should tell her, let her know the same number had been texting him, calling him, pushing him to do something his heart had been yearning for but his brain had been suppressing, something that would change everything. He silently promised himself that he would tell her everything, as soon as they got through at the scene and made it back to the station. It was a promise he made while "Silver Bells," slowly filtered out of the car's speakers, making two pairs of eyes slowly widen.

 **A/N: Will they get some answers? Will you? Hmm.**


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N: For someone who has never had a real family of her own, she sure seems to know what she's doing, hmm?**

 **DISCLAIMER: I do not own these characters or basic plot points, I do, however, own the words and storyline of this particular story, so don't sue me, Dick Wolf.**

"This is nice," Kathleen sighed contentedly, lying back on a leather reclining chair with cucumbers covering her eyes. A woman in a pink apron was rubbing a mint-green colored goo onto her face.

"This is weird," Lizzie, the youngest Stabler girl, mumbled as another woman in pink massaged orange-scented oil into her hands and wrists.

Olivia chuckled, her own eyes and face covered in green mud and sliced vegetables. "Just relax, girls," she laughed.

Maureen, the oldest Stabler child, giggled from somewhere behind Olivia. "That tickles," she squealed with a laugh, peering down at the pink-clad woman sloughing her feet, part of a pampering pedicure.

Kathleen sighed again, her personal attendant starting to rub pleasantly scented cream into her neck and shoulders. "What gave you the idea for this, Liv?"

Olivia let out a slightly painful moan as her masseuse hit a still-healing and tender spot on her shoulder, remnants of a case she'd rather forget. "We all needed a break, I think. You've been through a lot in the last few weeks, on top of midterms at school, and your father has been..."

"Deliriously happy," Lizzie interrupted. "I don't get it. Liv, did he want Mom to leave? Because he..."

"Lizzie, you know he didn't," Maureen piped in, wiggling her freshly painted toes. "None of us did. Dad's being strong, for us, and because...well, it's calmer around the house, isn't it? Is that wrong to say?"

Kathleen let out another sigh, but this time it wasn't happy. "Not wrong, no," she said. "Just the painful truth. And there's another reason Dad's been so happy, in spite of what happened. A reason we...all...are."

Lizzie looked over at Olivia, who seemed to stiffen even though she was getting a deep-tissue massage. "Yeah," she said. "I just...what did we do? Did we not love her enough? Did she not love us enough?"

Olivia sat up suddenly, nearly elbowing her masseuse in the face, letting the cucumbers fall off of her face. "Your mother loves you, very much." She looked around at the two other girls. "All of you. She love your brother and she..." she felt a sharp pang in her chest as the words formed in the back of her mouth, tasted acrid on her tongue as she let them be born on her voice. "She loves your father. That's why she felt that leaving was right. She wasn't ignorant of how all of the fighting with Daddy affected you guys, and she knew it hurt your dad, too. She knew it wasn't healthy, and no one was happy, and she didn't want to put any of you through any more pain, so she left."

She reached over and brushed Lizzie's hair behind her ear, carefully avoiding the layer of facial mask on her cheek. "She loves you more than she could ever possibly tell you, which is why she made the choice to go. She didn't want to drag you and your dad through a painful situation, and she didn't want to stay in an environment that became toxic. It wasn't fair to any of you, including her, and she just...well, all of you deserve to be happy, and she took the first step toward making sure that happens. That happiness for all of you..." she stopped, choking back a sudden sob, and she smiled at Lizzie. "You look like a mud-monster," she laughed.

Lizzie giggled. "So do you!" she yelled, pointing to Olivia's green-crusted face.

"We all look...absolutely horrifying," Maureen said, and the fur of them burst out into genuine laughter.

"You be pretty when masks come off," one of the pink-wearing women laughed, her thick Russian accent hanging on every word. "You lay back now, Ilsa make you glow."

An hour and a half later, all four girls were definitely glowing, beaming smiles to math their perfected complexions. They each had several shopping bags in their hands, and they were all singing an off-key Christmas carol when they climbed the stairs to the house in Queens. Olivia opened the door and let the girls spill into the living room, their laughter filling the house.

"You had a good time, I take it?" Elliot asked, crossing his arms as he tried to hide the huge grin on his face.

"Liv took us to this French place for tea!" Lizzie exclaimed brightly.

Maureen tossed her bags over her shoulder and added, with wide eyes, "We got facials and mani-pedis, and Liv punched a Russian nun!"

"Hun, not nun!" Kathleen corrected. "She punched a Russian hun!"

Elliot guffawed and looked at Olivia with smiling eyes. "Liv did what, now?"

"She deserved it," Olivia defended innocently. She dropped her bags onto the dining room table and dug around inside one, looking for something. "We didn't forget about you." She handed him a box and winked at him.

"Yeah, we did," Maureen teased. "Just Liv didn't."

"Oh, nice," Elliot scoffed. "You three gowash up for dinner, and put all of thataway before I realize how much you spent."

"We didn't spend anything," Lizzie said with a shrug. She ran over and gave Olivia a hug, kissed her dad on the cheek, and ran up the stairs with her sisters.

Elliot's smile faded into confusion and he turned toward Olivia again. "You paid for everything? All those bags, that had to..."

"Everything was on sale, and half of it was free when you bought something else," she interrupted, not willing to let him make her feel guilty for spoiling the girls who, over the years, had come to feel like her own daughters. "Stop squinting at me and open that before I take it back," she said, pointing down to the box, still in his hands.

He narrowed his eyes, but he grinned at her. "What am I gonna do with you, Benson?"

A million answers she could give raced through her mind, but she settled on a simple, "Whatever you want, just open it."

"Don't leave it up to me," he said, a smokiness in his voice now. "We'd get ourselves into trouble." He licked his lips and finally tore the top off of the box she had given him. His eyes widened as he moved the black tissue paper, and he looked back up at her with a slack jaw. "Liv," he breathed.

"Don't say anything, just...take it out and put it on." She helped him peel it out of the box and off of the card backing. "This is the one, right?"

Dumbly nodding, he let her wrap the watch around his wrist and clasp it. "Why?" was all he could manage.

"I don't need a reason," she said, taking slight pride in the effect her gift had on him. She watched as he trailed one finger around the face of the watch, then brought it up to his ear. "It works, El," she said, rolling her eyes.

He laughed. "I know, I know, I just...I know what this watch costs, and it's not Christmas yet, so I..." he stopped, looking into her eyes he was taken aback by the light in them, the glow, the pure emotion swimming in them, knowing that the same exact things were mirrored in his, reflecting back at her. He moved first, allowing himself this moment, and he pulled her close to him. "Thank you," he whispered into her ear.

Her eyes closed. Her head fell to his shoulder as her arms wound around his body. "You're...you're welcome," she whispered, pushing any thought of this being more than a 'thank-you' out of her mind, but when she felt him squeeze a bit tighter, felt her body being moved by his, to and fro, she smiled. "Are we dancing, now?"

"Mmm hmm," he hummed affirmatively. "I don't know what I did to deserve this, to deserve...you." He blinked as he pushed her away slightly to look at her. "Do you think, um, maybe we..."

"Damn it," she spat, pulling her interrupting phone out of her pocket. She shot him an apologetic look as she answered with a short, "Benson," the annoyance clear. "Hello?" she asked again, her brow furrowing. "Who is this?"

Elliot grabbed the phone and tapped the speaker button, laying it out in the palm of his hand. He listened to the mechanical voice talk over a low, slow version of Silver Bells.

The bells won't be chiming much longer. Accept the gifts I've laid at your feet, stop wasting time. Tick, tock, Detective Benson, I warn you to heed this Yultide rhyme. Once the clock strikes midnight, on this year's Christmas Eve, your chances will be lost forever and the past will have its reprieve. Final warning, mark my words, do what this message tells. I've been patient, but time rings on, just like these Silver Bells.

The dial tone was sudden, sharp, and Olivia and Elliot stared at each other over the phone, still balanced on his splayed hand. "You don't think…" he began.

"What? No," she snapped, taking her phone back. "I have no idea who this is or what they want, I haven't been given…"

"Me, Liv," he whispered, interrupting her. "I think...Kathy knew how we...how I... feel. Maybe she left so we could...find out if…"

Before he could gather enough gusto to string together his full theory, his phone rang, a familiar ringtone.

"Cragen," Olivia said, happy to have staved off a life-altering conversation for a few moments more. She watched as Elliot jutted a thumb toward the coat rack and she knew the drill. She moved fast, yelling a maternal warning and a few "I love you"s up the stairs before grabbing the coats off the rack and opening the front door. "What now?"

Elliot took his coat from her as he said, "Two guys in Santa suits were found in an elevator downtown, in a...uh...compromising position." He shivered as he stepped out into the snowy evening. "Ho ho ho, huh?"

She rolled her eyes and laughed, following him to the SUV in the driveway. She inhaled sharply, trying to shirk the joy of the day spent with the girls and settle herself into a professional mode. But the one thing keeping her from focusing was Elliot's half-spoken thoughts, his explanation of her mystery texts and calls, and the heavyweight feeling that he was absolutely right.

 **A/N: We find out the truth, and if they take the chance, next!**


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N: Someone is getting into the Christmas spirit! Or, is some sort of spirit getting to her?**

 **DISCLAIMER: I do not own these characters or basic plot points, I do, however, own the words and storyline of this particular story, so don't sue me, Dick Wolf.**

The squad room was bustling, much like the snow-covered streets just beyond the cement and plaster walls. Outside, people were figuratively killing each other over parking spots and the last video game console on the shelf, while inside, detectives worked tirelessly to find out who literally killed Jolly Ol' Saint Nick, twice.

The irony of the case wasn't lost on them. Not at all. Images of the plump, happy fellow beamed at them from walls and windows, reminding them that Santa sees you when you're sleeping, awake, or trying to hunt down the Grinch who stole Christmas, and two presumably innocent lives. Foe one detective in particular, though, the case was taking a backseat to a more pressing, personal mystery. Who the hell left her a vulgar, threatening message, and what did they want from her?

"You okay, over there, Benson?"

Olivia blinked, her lashes fluttered a bit too much as she straightened herself up and cleared her throat. "Yeah, fine," she said, a half-truth.

Munch tilted his head, staring skeptically at the woman, who had worn an uncharacteristically festive outfit, and he couldn't help but noticed her smile seemed more permanent these days. "Who is he?" he questioned, a sly grin on his weathered face.

"What?" Olivia's eyes crinkled in query, but her smile held steadfast as she blindly reached out a hand, knowingly, and took a foam cup from the offering arm to her left. "Who's who, now?"

Munch eyed her carefully as she sipped the coffee her partner had made and given without being asked, and he folded his angular arms. "The guy," he said. "There has to be a guy, and he has to be pretty spectacular to get you into a holiday groove."

Now, her face screwed up altogether, her smiling lips curled into a question mark as she took another sip of her coffee. "You been watching SyFy, again? Because that is a ridiculously fictional…"

"You're wearing red," Munch countered, interrupting her.

She looked down at her outfit, flummoxed. "A red sweater, that I've worn a hundred times!"

"And red earrings, you're wearing makeup, red lipstick, green eyeliner…" Munch paused, licked his lips, and laughed a singular, firm chuckle. "The past few weeks, you've been putting a whole lotta time and effort into what you wear, and what you put on your face, and normally this time of year, it's a grey hoodie and a full set of Louis Vuitton luggage under your eyes. So, I ask again, Benson," he warned, pointing a bony finger at her. "Who is he?"

"You know who Louis Vuitton is?" she asked, stifling a laugh at the absurdity of what Munch had observed, and the slight truth in how well Munch could read her.

Elliot, now glaring at Munch as he held his own coffee to his lips, snarled softly as he said, "You pay way too fucking much attention to her."

"Everyone in this unit pays too much attention to her," Fin piped up from his side of the room. "Maybe you're too Catholic to notice, man, but she's a woman, and she's hot."

Elliot's eyes darted fiercely toward Fin. "I noticed," he spat. "Don't you have a girlfriend?"

"Yeah, but I also have a pulse, and perfect vision," Fin shrugged, quirking his lips matter-of-factly.

Olivia felt her cheeks warm, both at the unexpected compliments, and from how viciously jealous Elliot was reacting. She took another sip of her coffee and said, "Okay, so, tomorrow, hoodie it is."

A chorus of laughter from the team diffused the tension slightly, though Elliot was still foaming at the mouth and sending murderous glances in Fin's direction. He dropped his coffee to his desk, and, taking a breath, he looked up at his partner. "You do look...beautiful. I don't know if I tell you that enough."

Her cheeks warmed again, but this time, a smile spread across her face along with the blush. "Thank you," she said, dropping her gaze. Maybe she was feeling like she had someone to impress, someone to look good for, and maybe, just maybe, she felt better about herself and wanted to take more time and pride in that. Deep down, she knew the reason, and he was staring at her as she sipped her coffee.

"Back to work, yeah?" Elliot said, clearing is throat again and trying to get his mind, and other body parts, off of his partner. He rubbed his eyes, trying to get the image of her silhouette through the shower curtain out of his mind, the sound of her melodic voice singing song he didn't know as he stood slack-jawed in the bathroom doorway, unable to move or breathe. "What, uh," he coughed as he blinked rapidly. "What did Warner get on the bodies?"

"One of them was covered in superglue and eggnog," Fin said, cringing. "The other, was...um...stuck to him." He flopped a few pages of the ME's report onto Elliot's desk. "Good thing about it is the perp left his fingerprint in the glue. Dried to a perfect exemplar."

"All right, Fin, pulling out the SAT words," Elliot joked, picking up the pages and flipping through them. "Hold on," he said, spotting something in the notes, and he straightened up. "Both of the Santas worked at the same place, Kinkaid Celebrations. I know the place. Rentable Santas, Easter Bunnies, clowns, you name it. I got two magicians and a princess there, one year, for the twins' birthday party." He scoffed. "Owner's a bastard. Takes ninety percent of what these people make, including their tips." He looked down at the ME's report. "Maybe our Santas put up a stink about it?"

Cragen thew open his door so hard the knob dented the wall behind it. "Munch, Fin, you two take the Snuggling Santas," he snapped, rushing toward Olivia and Elliot. "You two, priority case, courthouse, now!"

"Courthouse?" Olivia asked, leaping out of her seat.

"Cap, who?" Elliot questioned, grabbing his coat off the back of his chair, and Olivia's off of hers. He held it out for her, still staring at Cragen.

Olivia had gone white. "Not...not Casey," she breathed.

"No," Cragen comforted. "Not a lawyer. Just go. Melinda will meet you there." He gave Elliot a shove, pretending not to notice how the man tightened his grip on his partner as they jerked forward. "Now," he barked. Once he was satisfied they were heading out at the appropriate speed, he looked around at what was left of his unit, sighing, and retreated into his office. He closed the door, walked around his desk, and picked up the black telephone receiver. He dialed fast, waited, and then spoke. "Yeah, Cragen, SVU. I need to know what you got on Detective Benson's...yes, right," he grabbed a pen and scrawled a phone number and name down on his desk blotter. "Great, thanks," he said, and he slammed the receiver down on the cradle hard. "What are you playing at?" he asked, staring down at the name the TARU specialist had given him, grateful he got the information before Elliot.

The rest of the day had been rough, on everyone, especially Elliot. After dealing with the gruesome rape and murder of a district judge, and TV reporters in his face the whole time he was working the scene with Olivia, he'd come back and found himself in the middle of a tense meeting with Cragen, who gave him what little information he had about Olivia's phone calls.

Something hadn't been sitting right, though, since he left Cragen's office. Certain words resonated, others made no sense at all, but mostly, it felt as though he'd been thrust into one of Munch's conspiracies. Now, as the news blared in the background, he sat on a bench near the kitchen island, replaying the conversation with Cragen in his head.

 _Anything you want to tell me about you and Benson?_

 _How long has Kathy been gone? Do you know where she is? Does the name Finnick mean anything to you?_

 _Olivia's landlord turned off her heat and electricity three days ago, and why the hell didn't either of you tell me she was staying with you?_

 _Are you sleeping with her?_

 _Do you want to sleep with her?_

 _Is that all it would be? I can't lose my two best detectives over a fucking…_

And that's when Elliot unloaded. He wasn't even fully conscious of what he was saying, not having thought before words flew out of his mouth. He knew he was honest, though, and he knew he'd probably be fired in the morning, as soon as Cragen cooled off enough to realize the brevity of what was said, and the unapologetic "fuck you" Elliot had threw out when he left and slammed the door. He rubbed his eyes and tried to remember exactly what had flown out of his mouth, when his brain stopped working and his heart overcompensated.

 _There's nothing going on with me and Liv, she's my partner, we're just close. Partners should be close, right? Fuck._

 _She left the night before Thanksgiving, i know exactly where she is. Finnick? The dude from The Hunger Games? Lizzie loves those books, but I don't...that's not the name of a real person, is it?_

 _It's none of your damn business where she is, to be honest, she's helping me out with the kids, they can't make sense of why their mother just fucking walked out on us!_

 _What? No! I'm not sleeping with her!_

 _Oh, fucking hell, Cap! What is this really about? Who I sleep with, or want to sleep with, will never be any of your fucking..._

 _Knock it the fuck off, Cap! You know damn well it would never be anything less that pure fucking love, if it ever...and where the fuck do you get off talking to me like...and how fucking dare you talk about Olivia like some cheap slut, huh?_

There was more. A lot more. But he was too embarrassed or too pissed off or both to remember it all accurately. That is, until Olivia stepped into the room. The minute he turned around at the sound of her voice calling to him, his heart thudded, and with one look into her brown-black eyes, every word came flooding back to him, and he wasn't the least bit sorry about anything he'd said.

"I, uh, got another phone call," she whispered into the dark quiet.

He rose from his place at the nook and padded over to her, his flannel sweatpants brushing against the hardwood floor as he moved. "What did he say?"

"Just that...he said, um, well, just…" she handed him his phone, laying it into his open palm after tapping the replay button on the message. She bit her lip as he lifted the phone to his ear and listened as the recorded conversation between him and Cragen, the one he'd been struggling to remember and hoping to forget, played in his ear, When it ended, the same low, mechanical voice with a background of an ominous version of Silver Bells spoke.

 _You've heard it from the horse's mouth, he was firm and words compliant. Why, then, Detective are you still afraid? Stop being so damn defiant! I see my choices are not in vain, and that feelings here do matter. But now it's time to take the gifts laid out on silver platter. Time is wearing very thin, and prove your propinquity. Follow your hearts, or I follow my plan, and the outcome won't be pretty. Move forward, not backward, or else._

He closed his eyes and swallowed hard, dropping the phone. He let it fall, it landed with a plop onto the sofa. "Liv, I don't know what's going on, but I never meant for you to hear any of that. I didn't even intend for Cragen to hear any of it. I don't know what to..."

"Save it," Olivia said, shaking her head. "I heard..what you said to him, and I need to know if you…"

"Every word," he said, intruding into her speech. "Honestly, I...I didn't even know I was saying it until I said it, and when I did...saying it all out loud, I…" he blinked and took two step forward. "I meant it. All of it. And I don't know what kind of games this asshole is playing, but I think...I don't think he wants to hurt us, here, Liv. I think he's trying to...help us."

She looked up at him, her hair falling loosely into her eyes. "I got that feeling, too, but what is he saying? The past will…"

"I think he's telling us," he paused, took another step, and took her hands in his. "If we don't take the chance, see what...what's here, what we could be...then Kathy'll come home, and then we...we lose the chance. We're left wondering, worrying about the 'what ifs,' forever." He let his hands dance up her arms, back down, and then looping them around her waist. "I don't think I want to wonder or worry anymore," he whispered, pulling her closer.

He moved slowly, stopping when his nose touched hers. He brushed against her, an Eskimo kiss, his mouth curling into a grin. He whispered, so softly, "We've been here a thousand times, haven't we?"

"Never crossing the line," she whispered back, letting herself smile, even though every cell in her body was rigid with panic.

He let out a trembling breath. "No line to cross, now, is there?" he asked quietly. "Well, not as much of one as there was...before…" and he inhaled sharply again. "'I'm not doing this because some psycho is threatening to drag Kathy back from the hole she crawled into, I need you to know that I...I've been trying to figure out how to make a move for weeks." His laugh was nervous, but genuine, and when her chuckle hit his ears, he smiled more broadly. "You remember that case...upstate…"

She moved with him as he swayed, they were dancing again, to the music no one but him could hear. She dropped her head to his chest, his heartbeat pounding against it so hard it pulsed against her cheek. "Two weeks," she whispered, the 35 millimeter memory playing back in vivid technicolor. "I kept wondering what the hell was wrong with Kathy, I didn't understand how she could complain about being married to you. I know we were just…"

"I wasn't pretending," he interrupted. He pulled away from her and looked down into her eyes, seeing the fear and doubt cower being love and trust. He let his fingers crawl up and down the fabric of her tee shirt before finding their way beneath it, then he spread his bare palms against her skin. "It was...the most real anything in my life has ever felt, and when it was over I felt…lost." He let his forehead press against hers. "Going home to Kathy felt like...cheating on you. That sounds weird, but I…"

She cut him off, then. "I know. Exactly. I mean, I didn't go home to anyone, but dating anyone else just...hurt. But since I met you, it always hurt. I always compare them to you, and it's taken me this long to admit why."

"You heard me admit it, out loud," he told her. "So what's stopping us now?"

"Nothing," she heard herself say, and for a moment she wasn't sure if it was out loud or just in her head. She searched his eyes for any falter, any disgust or rebuttal, but all she found in them was the purest relief she'd ever witnessed.

Without blinking, he moved fast, afraid the phone would ring, or someone would knock on the door. They'd been dancing around this moment for weeks, and this was the closest fate had allowed them to come without interruption. His lips pressed to hers, a slight whimper escaped when he felt her jerk away, but he gave a relieved moan when he felt her sink into him and kiss him back.

Her arms looped around his neck, she felt his fingertips curl and grip her flesh, her body caved to his demands and she leaped up feeling him lift her, her legs winding around his waist.

He gave a playful, lustful thrust of his hips, groaning at the feeling of his thickness grazing her heat, needing more, knowing it was too soon, too fast, and all at once it took too long, they'd taken their sweet time, and all of it culminated in intense, primal need, wanting, and undefiled love and devotion.

This one kiss seemed to last an eternity and a moment, fleeting and forever, high-speed and slow-motion, until finally he had to pull back, the need for oxygen overpowering everything but the need for her. "Shit," he panted, laughing, pecking her cheeks and lips and chin and neck with a thousand tiny kisses as he breathed deeply, gearing up to latch onto her again.

She scraped her teeth along her swollen lips before meeting his again, moaning with him, her hands clutching the side of his head as he carried her over to the couch and sat, keeping her firmly straddled.

He bucked upward as he kissed her, a shared moan and a synchronized sigh filtered through the minuscule space between their lips as they figured out how to breath and kiss at the same time. Too much time had slipped through their fingers, and here, in this moment, they realized what had been missing, what had eluded them for so long, and what now had made them complete.

They were lost to their emotions, to the kiss that held so much of their pasts and so much of their futures, the kiss that shattered boundaries and tore down walls, so lost to each other that they didn't hear Olivia's phone ring.

The ignored call went to voicemail, and it wouldn't be until early the next morning, as they pried themselves apart and woke into their bright, new world, that she would hear the message: an upbeat, jazzy version of Silver Bells, and an address, with a final warning and a last goodbye.

 **A/N: Is it Cragen playing mind games? Is it Kathy just being sure she left Elliot for a reason? Someone else entirely? Want to find out? Hmm?**


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N: The caller pays a visit, in person, and Christmas hi-jinks ensue.**

 **DISCLAIMER: I do not own these characters or basic plot points, I do, however, own the words and storyline of this particular story, so don't sue me, Dick Wolf.**

The day was a blur, fogged smears of colors rushing through piles of paperwork as penal codes and legal jargon filtered through the air along with muzak versions of Christmas songs. Annual case reviews and personnel evaluations, on top of a high-profile case coming to a close, all seemed to make the moments twist together like a sadistic candy cane.

"You two," Cragen barked, wagging a thick finger at Olivia, then at Elliot, then back again. "You come as a single unit, now, don't you? So get in here."

With a worried glance at each other and a shared gulp, the pair rose from their Siamese desks, joined at the front, and walked in total synchronization toward the captain's office. It was the first time either of them would be speaking to him since Elliot's outburst, and the fact they both still found gainful employment with Manhattan SVU was nothing short of a Christmas miracle.

"Sit," Cragen all bit hissed as he slammed the door behind them. He clomped over to his desk and leaned against it, crossing his arms, his scowl only growing more bitter the longer he stared at the two people in front of him.

Olivia, knowing that Cragen had a soft spot for her and couldn't stay mad at her for too long, took the chance and spoke. "What did we do?"

"That's the thing, I don't think I want to know what you did!" Cragen exclaimed gruffly. "Your jackets are two of the thickest in the whole department, and normally that would be cause for termination, but you two...there are more commendations and accolades than black marks, which is why you're making my life fucking hard, right now!" He pressed two fingers into the dip in his forehead and swiped hard, exhaling. "I got high brass breathing down my neck to hand you new shields and put you on a couple-a training committees, so tell me what the fuck I'm supposed to do about your rebound…"

"That's not what this is!" Elliot yelled, clearly unconcerned with the state of his job. "I told you that, already! Not that it's any of your business, but I didn't even so much as kiss her, until last night!"

Cragen let out a soft, annoyed, snort. "Yeah, I know." And suddenly he smirked. "Fucking took you long enough."

Olivia narrowed her eyes. "Hold on," she said, shifting in her seat. "What?"

"Oh, my God," Elliot chuckled. "You? The whole time, it was you? You have no idea how many people I told about this! Fuck, Cap! I mean, Liv's been getting threatening phone calls, from someone pushing us together before Kathy tried to weasel her way back into my life. You don't think I took every available step to protect her? Shit, man, I thought we were in deep shit, here, so..."

Cragen looked surprised, his eyes widening slightly as his smirk unfurled into a flat line. "What did you do?"

Elliot stared, stunned, at his captain. "I called Tucker, I called a few people higher up the food chain, even called a friend of mine in the bureau, and I know that...wait, you convinced me, years ago, that if I tried anything with her, I would get one of us fired, which is, honestly, what kept us from having an affair. If you wanted us together so badly, why tell us it would get us into hot water?"

"To protect you," Cragen said, uncrossing his arms. "You put each other first, far too often, and you cover for each other, lie for each other, even when…"

"But has it cost us a case? A life?" Elliot stood now, with an earnest expression and stern voice. "Have we ever compromised a case, without a damn good reason? When it wasn't right?"

Cragen's face fell. "No, but that's not what I…"

"I didn't think so," Elliot said. "Another question, even Tucker knew this would have happened eventually, and then he laughed like a hyena, telling me he won a bet. How much do you owe him, exactly?"

That's when Olivia perked up and her head whipped toward Elliot. "Excuse me?" she asked angrily. "Bet?"

Elliot looked at her for a moment, but then grinned smugly as he turned back toward Cragen. "Yeah," he huffed. "So we aren't in any trouble with IAB, in fact, Tucker wants to throw us a goddamn parade, so tell me, Cap, why were you so hell-bent on keeping us apart for so long?"

Cragen cleared his throat. "I wasn't, not...not really, I just…"

Elliot interrupted again. "All those phone calls, the manipulated voice, telling Morales up in TARU it was for some kind of holiday prank war...and then you think, since your plan worked, we're gonna be okay?" He slumped his shoulders and licked his lips. "Surveillance? Using a fictional character as an alias to throw us off? You went that far, just to make sure we would get together, and I want to know why!"

"Oh, please," Cragen breathed, rolling his eyes. "You call yourself a detective? Yes, I sent texts and made calls, pushing Olivia to act on the feelings that...I saw how much she'd been falling in love with you, and damn it, Elliot, it was killing her!" He rubbed a hand down his face. "The pain in her eyes every time you mentioned Kathy, The kicked-puppy look on her face whenever Kathy came by to drop off dinner, clothes, or your toothbrush, and you never saw it!"

"I always saw it! You don't think it killed me, a little bit, too? Knowing that our situation fucking sucked? Damn it, I fell in love with her years ago, but I couldn't…"

"You wouldn't!" Cragen yelled, "And I let you think it would get you in a steaming pile of shit, because I was protecting her! And you! You think I wanted to sit back and watch you make her the other woman? Use her, and then go home and play house with someone else? No way in hell." He sniffled and coughed, either getting a cold or keeping himself from crying. Or both. "No, I pushed her to make a move, before Kathy came back, because we all know she'd come back, so you would tell her…"

Elliot stiffend when Cragen stopped speaking, "Tell her what? What exactly was your plan, here, Captain?"

"I couldn't keep watching her kill herself over you, Elliot," Cragen softened. "You had to tell her how you felt, one way or the other, so she could move on, stop pining for you." He coughed again. "In my heart, I knew the truth, that she would tell you and you'd spiral into the romance of the century. You're the love of each other's life, I know you love her, I do. But if you told her that you loved your wife, that you would work it out, it would've been okay, too, because she would stop making herself miserable by holding out hope for a chance with you, when all of the chances for her just passed her by." He wiped away a tear, hoping that neither of them noticed it fall. "I am thankful that you two finally admitted how you felt, and that you're going to make each other happier than you have ever been, but I am scared, now, because you're the best team I have, and I can't split you up, you fall to complete shit when I do that, so what happens if this ends badly or one of you wants to…"

"Leave the unit," Olivia surmised, taking in all of what Cragen had said, "You're scared because you can't be held responsible if we fuck up?"

"Something like that," Cragen laughed softly. "This...this was my Christmas present to you, to you both. I can't watch it all fall apart."

"Never gonna happen," Elliot declared. "It took this long because...I think we both wanted to be sure we wouldn't fuck up, for the same reason."

Olivia spoke up. "Cap, uh, how did you...how did you know when to…"

Cragen raised a hand, stopping her. "I talked to Kathy, the Saturday after Thanksgiving. She came here, hoping to see you, Elliot. She wanted to apologize, convince you the divorce wasn't what she wanted, but I talked to her, and I asked her...I asked her if she saw the same thing I did, if she had the same fears I had, and when she said yes, I gave her some advice, and she took it." He inhaled sharply. "I didn't know how long it would be until she tried again, until she came back, so I may have crossed a line, and I never meant to scare you, but you had to see what was between you two before it was too late, and I thought...well, I thought you needed a push in the right direction, so I stepped in. I'm sorry."

Elliot sat down again, next to Olivia, and took her hands in his. He looked at her for a long moment, and then looked at Cragen. "You gave us the best present you could have possibly given us," he said, smiling. "But why all the cloak and dagger bullshit, I was terrified that someone was going to hurt her, or that Kathy was going mental."

Cragen folded his arms again. "I couldn't give advice about your personal life, not like this," he said. "Not without…" he closed his eyes and sighed. "Not without having to…"

Cragen's door swung open, then, and Fin looked around, wide-eyed. "Sorry to interrupt, but, uh, we got a problem."

Cragen scrunched up his face, straightened up, and walked out of his office into the squad room. Silver Bells was playing on every computer, green and red balloons littered the ceiling and floor, and set atop Olivia and Elliot's desks, sealed green and red envelopes and a bouquet of red and white roses.

Elliot looked around, shocked, and then turned to Cragen. He whispered, "Really, Cap, I know you're happy for us, but this is...this is a bit much."

Cragen, though, was pale white, and as he slowly turned toward Elliot, he whispered back. "This wasn't me."

 **A/N: UH….what?**


	7. Chapter 7

**A/N: It's Christmas Eve, nearing midnight on the east coast of the US. Do our two detectives get their presents?**

 **DISCLAIMER: I do not own these characters or basic plot points, I do, however, own the words and storyline of this particular story, so don't sue me, Dick Wolf.**

Quarter-past five, fifteen minutes until she was officially off-duty for the holiday weekend, and she was frozen to her chair perched at her desk, staring at the flowers, spinning one of the gift cards from a random green envelope in her fingers.

"We exhausted all of our possibilities," he told her, trying to get her to stop working on an unsolvable puzzle. "It wasn't Cragen, it wasn't Kathy, none of the kids, no one in the unit..."

"Your mother," she told him, raising an eyebrow. "Call her."

He stared at her for a moment. "Come on," he scoffed. "We have to go home, feed the kids, get dressed, go to the department party, and...if I call her, she will keep me on the phone until New Year's Eve." He chuckled, seeing her smile back at him, and then he sighed. "You really think this was her?"

"I think all of it was," she said to him, matter-of-factly, tossing the gift card to Romano's Ristorante down onto her desk. "Cragen wouldn't go as far as he did, not on his own, and you know it." She tilted her head and looked up at Elliot, a knowing look in her eyes. "You told me your mother never really liked Kathy, and she wasn't exactly thrilled about when, why, or how you married her. She would jump at the chance to make sure you were happy, with someone for the right reasons..."

"Shit," he said, leaning back in his rolling chair. He looked at the scattered envelopes, each one containing a gift card for a store or restaurant, places he loved, and places he had told his mother Olivia frequented, and it all began to make sense. "I think you're right. This is something...something she would do." He got up quickly and said, "Get your coat on, I have to ask Cragen about this, and then...and then we are leaving and having one hell of a time at the Christmas party." He winked and then turned on his heels and headed for Cragen's office door.

He hadn't told her what Cragen said, had not even given her a hint, he simply came out, grabbed his own coat, and as he'd promised, led Olivia out of the sqaudroom. He had been quiet on the way home, even more quiet as he cooked a fast dinner for the kids, only opening his mouth to issue parental rules and warnings for the night they'd spend in the house alone.

"Say something," she finally prodded as they pulled up to the banquet hall, the lavish place the NYPD had chosen to hold the annual holiday gala.

He turned his head as he parked in front of the valet booth. "You look absolutely beautiful," he said, sincerity in his voice, his fingers brushing slowly down her cheek.

She smiled. "Thank you," she whispered and attempted to keep herself from blushing. "But I meant, say something about..."

"You were right," he sighed, getting out of the car. He ran as fast as he could around the vehicle, eager to be the one that opened her door. He glared at the valet, making the pimple faced teen back away wide-eyed, and he held open the passenger side door with one hand and held the other out to her. He curled his fingers around hers and brought her knuckles up to his lips. He kissed each one sweetly, handed the kid a ten dollar bill, and walked with Olivia to the large open double-doors.

"It was your mom?" she asked, her brows arching in curves.

He sighed as he nodded, and helped her off with her coat. "Cragen said...she called not too long after he spoke with Kathy, and they cooked up this elaborate scheme to..." he cleared his throat. "She said it was to make up for her mistakes. She blamed her, um, unique parenting for my poor choices, and this was her...making it up to me."

She leaned forward, kissed him lightly on his lips, and whispered, "I think she did good," and she winked at him to punctuate her statement.

He narrowed his eyes. "You don't think they pushed us too hard? Rushed us?" He tossed their coats over the counter at the concierge and blindly held out his hand for a ticket. Feeling it hit his palm, he shoved it in his pocket and pulled Olivia into the ballroom. "Seriously?"

"El," she sighed, "Honestly, I think...we waited long enough. Haven't we?" she asked, blinking. "Or was I misreading signals for the last..."

"Oh, thank God," he breathed, interrupting her. His arms wrapped around her silver dress, his hands smoothing down the silk and cupping just before it would've been deemed indecent. He pulled her to him and kissed her hard. He felt her hands move up his back, her nails beginning to scratch the nape of his neck. He pressed further into her, moaning slightly at his body's instant reaction to her touch.

She pulled away first, a small laugh leaving the back of her throat. "We, uh, we are in front of...literally, everyone we know."

"I know," he said, nodding, his lips and cheeks flushed. "I want to tell the world how crazy I am about you, and that..."

"Did I just see what I think I just saw?" Fin's voice called on a laugh.

Olivia and Elliot turned, seeing him sauntering over with his date. Olivia paled, looked at Elliot, and then back at Fin. "Well, um, yeah, we were just..."

"It's about damn time," Fin said, slapping Elliot on the shoulder. "All that nonsense, the balloons and shit, was that you askin' her to..."

"Yup," Elliot said, grinning, figuring at this point the lie was more believable than the truth. "We, uh, we are...we are an 'us,' now."

Fin squinted. "Nah, man," he said. "You always were." He patted Elliot on the shoulder again, shot a smiling nod to Olivia, and walked away with his date, leading her to the dance floor.

Olivia cleared her throat, garnering Elliot's attention again, and she took a deep breath before saying, "Seems like everyone really did expect this."

He laughed, and kissed her again, softly, slowly. "Dance with me," he whispered into her ear. It wasn't a question, it wasn't a demand, but had fallen somewhere in between.

She bit her lip coyly as she nodded, eyeing him up and down as they moved toward the floor. His black suit seemed custom-made for him, it fit perfectly, not hiding but accentuating every part of his physique. His silver tie glinted in the dim lights of the room, and his smile radiated. "Hey, listen," she said, moving effortlessly into his arms. "They're playing our song."

He rolled his eyes as the tune hit his ears, and he pulled her even closer. "I can't get mad at it," he said, shaking his head. He looked into her eyes and his smile took on a pure love that he knew only existed because of her, for her. "It brought me to you."

She smiled back, her own emotions dancing along with them. "It did, didn't it?"

He nodded, his head dipping toward her, his lips lightly brushing hers before he kissed her. He swayed with her in his arms as the song swelled and swirled around them.

 _Silver bells...silver bells...it's Christmastime in the city..._

He wound her tighter, moved slower, less dancing and more kissing, taking them both away for just a moment.

"You seeing that, Cap?" Munch asked, perched at the bar as he nudged Cragen with his elbow.

"I sure do, John," Cragen returned with a content smile. "I sure do." He brought the glass of plain seltzer to his lips, sipped, and said, "And before you ask, I'm fine with it. They deserve to be happy, and they've proven they can do their jobs, just fine, regardless of..."

"Captain," Munch said, cutting him off, "I wasn't gonna ask. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't hallucinating. I've had four of these already." He waved a curved glass that obviously had some heavy-duty alcohol it in a few minutes ago.

Cragen laughed, shook his head, and said, "No, John, you're seeing it right." He took the glass away from him and replaced it with his own still-full glass. "But, uh, just in case, drink this."

Munch nodded his thanks and took a sip as his gaze returned to Olivia and Elliot, still kissing, conveniently beneath a bunch of Mistletoe. "They look happy."

"They are happy," Cragen said.

"Haven't told them yet, then, huh?" Munch asked, setting the glass of seltzer down on the bar.

Cragen sighed sadly, then. "No point in dampening their Christmas, John." He folded his arms and as he remembered that he owed Ed Tucker a few hundred bucks, and why, he grinned. "It can wait until New Year's."

 **A/N: HAVE YOURSELVES A MERRY LITTLE CHRISTMAS! I love you all! (and yes this hints at a New Year's fic...series)**


End file.
